Interview by Zoë Brigley
There are many poems concerned with other breath related topics from different cultures and geographies. This is one such.
Hair’s breadth
I The child watches a pair of hares chase around the paddock by the holiday cottage. Rime has whitened grass and gorse in every field from there to the edge of the winter sea. The hares breathe like dragons in the ice blue air. They disappear as the window steams up and indoor rain runs onto the sill. Waking her sleeping parents, she brings news. ‘There are huge rabbits in Wales.’ II Hunched on a cold kitchen floor, the field hare quivers, each hair of its fur on end. Its body casts a small shadow. Ears at a quizzical angle, its eyes are fixed, yet, reflect a window. It’s 1502 and Albrecht is painting his supper, one frightened breath at a time.
I’m interested in how this poem has two parts, a diptych maybe. In the first the hare is almost mythical – the subject of child’s awe – but in the second it is a figure of abject vulnerability probably about to be eaten. How did this contrasting vision come about?
This poem comes from my in-progress manuscript, Sublime Lungs, which deals with the breath and breathing and my chronic lifelong asthma. There are many poems concerned with other breath related topics from different cultures and geographies. This is one such.
I am interested in the mistakes people make with language – hare’s breath being one, where what is meant is hair’s breadth. Hence I am playing with that confusion in the poem, illustrated by two examples of hares breathing, one from a memory of a Welsh holiday when my youngest daughter was small, the other Duhrer’s painting. Quite how the idea of those two things popped into my head is a mystery, but they make for an interesting juxtaposition. I like to find such associations and have written longer poems previously exploring all the different ways with iron, for example, as a kind of assay.
In the first part the hares were real, but are almost mythical too, hence the dragon breath line – though more prosaically that is what we have always called our visible breath in my family.
This poem is inspired in part by Albrecht Duhrer’s Young Hare. How did that come about and how useful do you find ekphrasis of one kind or another?
Ekphrais – ah, yes. Art is one of my great loves and interests. When I am not writing, I am a printmaker. I have spent forty odd years looking at and thinking about art, so it is a great inspiration and source of images and narratives. I have written a number of poems on and from artworks of all kinds, not that you would necessarily know it, as unless there is some reason to mention the work, I prefer not to. Here, of course, the point is that one needs to know or look up the painting in order to follow the poem.
You use couplets and tercets in this poem. How do you decide on what form would be best for a particular poem? I can see why the line about the hares like dragons stands apart and alone from the other couplets.
As to the form, this is almost impossible to answer – the poem finds its form? I prefer poems that let in the air, that allow the reader and writer to breathe, if you like. I find dense poems without stanza breaks very hard on the eyes and to make sense of. As to why couplets or why tercets, I think this is probably governed by where it felt best to put the line breaks when initially writing each part, but in terms of content, the longer lines for a pair of running hares (couple/couplet) and shorter lines for the terrified single hare seem fitting to me.
Such a marvellous poem and your answers to the questions are illuminating too.
I’m working on juxtaposition at the moment. Your poem arrests our attention with all the senses.
I feel lucky to have found it this morning.
Lizzie Fincham